“I began to get still. But I had no sooner commenced than a perfect pandemonium of voices reached my ears, a thousand clamoring notes from without and within, until I could hear nothing but their noise and din. Some of them were my own voice, some were my own questions, some of them were my very prayers. Others were the suggestions of the tempter, and the voices of the world’s turmoil.”
With that deep hush subduing all
Our words and works that drown
The tender whisper of thy call,
As noiseless let thy blessing fall
As fell thy manna down.
The central thrust of Early Quaker preaching was a call to people to know Christ as the Prophet, the one who is to be heard and obeyed, in all things. One of the first things that people did, when convinced by this message, was to gather together with others, likewise convinced, to hear their Christ, their Teacher. Once we understand this, we can see that gathering together in silence to hear Christ Jesus, is the only proper human response to God’s call to hear His Son. In that way, Quaker worship is itself, a response to God’s call to hear and obey Christ Jesus.
I am stable. I am grounded. I feel the earth beneath me. I feel balanced. I can’t be pushed from this place of physical and spiritual grounding easily.
The Lord of Heaven and earth we found to be near at hand, and, as we waited upon him in pure silence, our minds out of all things, his heavenly presence appeared in our assemblies, when there was no language, tongue, nor speech from any creature. The Kingdom of Heaven did gather us and catch us all, as in a net, and his heavenly power at one time drew many hundreds to land.
“There is a progression in the spiritual life. It is not wise to tackle the Mt. Everest of the soul before having had some experience with lesser peaks. So I would recommend beginning with a daily period of from five to ten minutes. This time is for learning to “center down,” or what the contemplatives of the Middle Ages called “re-collection.” It is a time to become still, to enter into the recreating silence, to allow the fragmentation of our minds to become centered.”
As we learn the way of holy silence — a silence that expects to encounter and hear God — we begin finding our spirits in continuous communion with God. This can be true even when life rushes around us […] Interior soulful silence shows us that we can live at different levels. We can be outwardly busy while inwardly talking and listening to God.
In contrast to traditional ways of living, modernity relies on what we can consciously think about and talk about, what we can demonstrate or exhibit in the public arena. We moderns need to be in control. That is our strength. But it is also our weakness, because we dare not trust those aspects of our life that elude our control, our rational understanding. We become insensitive to them, even sometimes denying their very existence.
Oh, that ye might inwardly know these things! Turn in, turn in. Mind what stirs in your hearts; what moves against sin, what moves towards sin. The one is the Son’s life, the Son’s grace, the Son’s Spirit; the other is the spirit and nature which is contrary thereto. If ye could come but to the sense of this, and come to a true inward silence, and waiting, and turning at the reproofs of heavenly wisdom, and know the heavenly drawings into that which is holy and living, ye would soon find the Lord working in your hearts.
When your heart is wandering and distracted, bring it back quickly to its point, restore it tenderly to its Master’s side, and if you did nothing else the whole of your hour but bring back your heart patiently and put it near our Lord again, and every time you put it back it turned away again, your hour would be well-employed.
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